History of a Pleasure Seeker Page 2

  Piet did so and sat at the piano, wondering what he should play. He was no virtuoso, and the possibility that an oily-nosed overachiever would snatch this chance from him made his stomach clench. He opened the instrument, waiting for inspiration, and the memory that came to him was of his mother telling him that the only key for love is E flat major. He glanced at Jacobina. She did not look like a woman whose sensual appetites were well catered for, and the room was certainly the temperature for tenderness.

  What would she permit?

  The idea of finding out reignited old temptations, for this was not the first flirtation Piet Barol had conducted from a piano stool. He hesitated, weighing the dangers. But already the adrenaline of risk was pumping through him and would not be disobeyed.

  Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts wanted a tutor with authority and gentleness. He should play her something slow and sentimental and not too difficult, preferably in E-flat major. But what? Jacobina moved past the piano and turned to face him, just as his mother’s students had done. As she passed he caught her scent—of rosewater and musk and hand-laundered underwear—and it came to him that the second nocturne of Chopin fulfilled all his criteria.

  Nina Barol’s edition marked this piece espressivo dolce—to be played sweetly and expressively—and Piet began to play it softly from memory, at a slow andante. The piano was first rate and recently tuned, and it lent his performance a finesse he did not often achieve on his mother’s upright.

  He was correct: it was many years since anyone had touched Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts with the aim of giving her pleasure. Jacobina had almost ceased to mourn this sad fact, but in the presence of such a beautiful young man it struck her forcefully. She stepped closer to see him better. Piet’s face was manly but graceful, with succulent red lips that prompted thoughts of her husband’s dry little kisses.

  Jacobina looked away.

  Piet tripped in a run of semiquavers, but the piano forgave him and hid all traces of the jarring note in folds of rich harmony. As he played he sensed the atmosphere responding to the music’s enchantments. Indeed Jacobina’s nostalgia for the lost opportunities of her youth increased with every note. Watching Piet, she was not unaware of the muscles of his shoulders nor of the way his perfectly laundered shirt clung to his back as he leaned over the keys. It was a long time since she had heard any music but her son’s relentless exercises, and the gentleness with which Piet’s huge fingers elicited these hushed sounds from the piano was bewitching.

  It was a secret she no longer shared with anyone, but Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts was very different from the woman her family and closest friends thought they knew. In her deepest self she was more like Louisa than Constance and had spent her girlhood imagining a life not at all like the one she now enjoyed. A change in her breathing made Piet’s pulse quicken. He looked up, caught her watching him, and held her gaze until she looked away. He was used to enlivening the lessons of Nina Barol’s prettiest pupils in this fashion and since his seventeenth birthday had grown steadily bolder—though he had never yet employed his stratagems on a lady of rank, or in a situation so laden with potential disaster.

  Piet played the last bars of the nocturne very delicately and the piano’s ringing made the air between them tingle. He did not silence it by lifting his foot from the pedal. When Jacobina said “Play me something more modern, Mr. Barol,” he was ready for her. His choice was the entr’acte to the third act of Carmen, also in E-flat major, which had been useful in similar situations before. Its pure, beguiling melody rose from the embers of the nocturne and the rumbling arpeggios of the bass line showed his hands to advantage. As he played, he thought of the smugglers who appear onstage at its close, whispering that fortune awaits if only they will tread carefully. This was exactly how he felt as he drenched his quarry in sweet, permissive magic.

  Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts’ social position protected her from the lascivious stares of men. The possibility that she had encountered one now left her flustered, but not disagreeably so. She looked away, deciding that she had been mistaken, but when her eyes flicked again to Piet Barol’s she found that his were ready to meet them, and this was joltingly erotic. Jacobina rode twice a week but otherwise took very little exercise. She had recently begun to worry that this showed and to feel rather let down by her once sylphlike body. To receive an admiring glance from a young man was exhilarating.

  She stared out of the window as Piet finished playing.

  “What a touch, Mr. Barol.” She spoke the compliment to the street outside and when she turned to face Piet he was smiling at her, and did not stop.

  Piet Barol’s smile often got him what he wanted. On this occasion it was full of charming hopefulness, and under its influence Jacobina made a decision. “You are welcome to take your meals with us, or dine out as you wish. You will find us an easy-going family. My daughters delight everyone they meet. And Egbert …” But she left this sentence unfinished. “Mrs. de Leeuw will show you to your room.”

  “I will give of my best, mevrouw.”

  “I am sure my husband will wish to see you before dinner. I’ll have some shirts and socks of his sent up. We can arrange for your bags to come tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts.”

  “Je vous en prie.”

  Naomi de Leeuw did not approve of tutors as a breed, nor of their ill-defined place in the household hierarchy—neither servant nor guest. One or two of Piet’s predecessors had used this blurred distinction to their advantage and she had no intention of allowing this cocky young man to do the same.

  “You will share the attic floor and a bathroom with Mr. Blok and Mr. Loubat,” she said stiffly as she led him to his room. “I thank you not to visit the basement, where the maids’ rooms are, after five p.m. We have high standards of cleanliness. You are permitted to take two baths a week and will have shaving water every day. Shirts are to be worn three times at a maximum. Hilde Wilken will do your laundry.” She opened a door and ushered Piet into a small, comfortably furnished bedroom with a window that looked over the garden. “There is no smoking in the house, and no drinking unless you are offered refreshment by a member of the family. The bathroom is two doors along. You are required to attend church on Sunday mornings but may spend Sunday afternoons at your leisure. Do you have any questions, Mr. Barol?”

  “I don’t think so, Mrs. de Leeuw.”

  “Very well. I do hope you’ll be comfortable here.”

  When she had gone, Piet sat on his bed and loosened his tie. He was half alarmed by the suddenness of the change he had wrought in his fortunes. Gone at a stroke was the tiny alcove, separated by a curtain from his father’s room, in which he had slept since leaving his cradle. Gone was the outside toilet, the rusting plumbing, the vile university food to which he and Herman had become accustomed since his mother’s death. The ambitions he had nursed so privately—of travel and comfort and elegance, of escaping forever the straitened gentility of his youth—were plausible now, seized from the realm of fantasy by his own determination to act on his instincts. To have a room of his own at last! To be able to bathe without laying a fire and boiling the water; to shit without shivering in the little wooden hut beside the back door! He started to laugh as the nervous energy of the afternoon drained from him. He felt light and triumphant, capable of anything.

  There was a knock at the door. It was Didier Loubat, the footman, with a pile of shirts and collars and a little box of studs. He was taller than Piet and blond, with a strong jaw and sharp sea-green eyes. “The old man wants to see you in forty-five minutes. His office is at the front of the house, on the first floor. D’you want me to come and get you, or will you find it on your own?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Good man. The whole family’s gathering to vet you at dinner. Bonne chance.” Didier’s friendliness was a relief after Mrs. de Leeuw’s chilly formality. “My room’s next door if you need anything, and the bathroom’s down the hall. A little tip: don’t let Blok se
e you in a towel. He’s a terrible old lecher.”

  “I thought he might be.”

  Didier grinned. “You need your wits about you in this house, but you’ll get used to it. There’s a towel in the cupboard.”

  The towel in the cupboard was of vast size and fresh-smelling fluffiness. Piet took it with him to the bathroom, which was tiled in white porcelain and deliciously clean. In the corner was an eight-foot bath, and when he turned the tap the suddenness with which boiling water gushed from it took him by surprise and scalded him. That such quantities of hot water could be obtained so effortlessly was miraculous to him. He filled the tub very full and undressed and got in and stretched back at full length, baptizing himself in his new life. He would cable to his father tomorrow, but Herman had never shown much concern for his whereabouts and Piet doubted that his absence tonight would alarm him. He lay in the hot water, feeling very pleased with himself, but as it cooled so did his triumph and the complexities of his new situation stole in and replaced it.

  Piet had sufficient experience of female unpredictability to know the risks of forming a liaison with his new employer’s wife. As he washed, he decided that he would never again allude to the unspoken communications of the afternoon. Emigration to America and the making of a considerable fortune were the next stage of his plan. He would take no chances until he had saved the money to fund them. He submerged himself again, and it came to him that his efforts with Mrs. Vermeulen-Sickerts had left him in a powerful negotiating position with her husband. The salary advertised was sixty guilders a month. It was clear from the establishment at Herengracht 605 that the man who owned it could afford considerably more. Piet got out of the bath and began to dry himself. Unless he was very much mistaken, Jacobina would make sure he was employed whatever the salary. His experience of wealthy undergraduates had shown him that many rich men prefer to pay more, rather than less, on the grounds that quality is closely correlated with expense.

  He dressed slowly and carefully, and by the time he was finished he had decided to add a further challenge to the many he had risen to that day.

  He had decided to ask for more.

  The office of Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts was protected from disturbance by a small anteroom. Piet knocked twice at its door before gathering the courage to pull the rope of twisted vermilion silk that rang a bell above Maarten’s desk. He heard its far-off tinkle, then vigorous steps, and then his new employer stood before him: a powerfully built, square-shouldered man with a full head of hair, silver at the temples, a prominent nose, and small dark eyes that bored so deeply into him he almost lost his nerve.

  “My wife speaks very warmly of you, Mr. Barol.” He gripped Piet’s hand with a force that made many men wince. Piet did not wince. Maarten gestured for him to enter a handsomely proportioned room, papered in lemon yellow and cluttered with objects in silver, crystal, and gilt.

  “You are a collector, sir.”

  “When I have the time. Sit down, if you please.”

  Piet sat on a chair made of dark wood, upholstered in pale blue and gold.

  “That was made for the palace of Louis Napoleon, when he was king of Holland. This one is from the Palace of Fontainebleu.” He sat down on it emphatically. “I enjoy fine furniture. But I’m also fond of china and porcelain and silver, anything that is made by hand and of rare quality. I value human endeavor, Mr. Barol, and the achievements our machine age cannot hope to emulate.”

  “We have something in common there, sir.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I have less opportunity to pursue my interests, and of course I cannot buy. But I like to draw objects of beauty. There are several fine collections in Leiden. I have spent many wet afternoons sketching them.”

  “You draw well?”

  “Tolerably well, sir.”

  “Would you be kind enough to draw something for me? Something in here.”

  Maarten was a man who believed in putting the claims of other men to the test, and his wife’s enthusiastic commendation of the handsome young chap before him made him rather wish to find fault with Piet Barol. He went to his desk and returned with a miniature silver model of a man on a tightrope, balancing precariously. “Eighteenth century Dutch. Let me get you some paper, Mr. Barol.”

  The detailing on the miniature was extremely fine. The way the man was about to fall off his rope, and yet never would, seemed to Piet to speak to his own situation. Indeed, it was precisely this quality that had persuaded Maarten Vermeulen-Sickerts to part with one hundred guilders for it twenty years before—when such a sum was meaningful to him. Like Piet he was accustomed to putting himself in dangerous situations and emerging from them unscathed. It was he, after all, who had seen the potential in his neighbor’s barren farms, he who had sunk everything he had into purchasing the equipment to dig up their peat bogs, transport the fuel to Amsterdam, and refill them as lakes that froze in the winter. This had provided the raw material for his first fortune, built on selling ice around the world. Quite 30 percent of his first cargo had melted on its way across the Atlantic to the convenience-obsessed shores of the United States. Everyone had said he was a fool; that it would never work. And yet it had worked. Like the little silver man teetering on the silver rope, high above the silver plate that bore his weight, he had not fallen off.

  Piet succeeded in capturing the miniature with such skill, and so quickly, that Maarten was impressed despite himself. He did not show this but embarked instead on a detailed examination of Piet’s history, which lasted longer than it would have done had his wife not already decided to hire him. But she had, and Maarten did not disagree with the women in his life if he could help it. Piet’s was not the most distinguished record he had ever seen, but Egbert’s last two tutors had been highly distinguished and had nevertheless failed utterly.

  “My son needs to learn to leave the house without having hysterics.”

  “I understand that, sir.”

  “Very well. You have impressed my wife and I am prepared to retain you. Have you any questions?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “What are they?”

  The moment had come and Piet steeled himself to seize it. “They concern the remuneration.” He spoke as though the subject were infinitely distasteful to him.

  “Sixty guilders a month, Saturday afternoons and two Sundays off, free board and lodging, and two weeks’ holiday.”

  “I am content with the other terms, Mr. Vermeulen-Sickerts. But I am afraid the salary prevents me from accepting the position.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My father is elderly and I wish to marry one day. I am not in a position to work for sixty guilders a month.”

  The effrontery of this astounded Maarten, but it also impressed him. He approved of people who valued themselves highly, provided they had valid grounds for doing so. “It is an excellent rate, Mr. Barol. You would be hard-pressed to equal it elsewhere.”

  “As a tutor, perhaps, sir. But I am young and have other opportunities.”

  “That pay more?”

  “That could, in time, pay a great deal more.” A trickle of sweat ran down the inside of Piet’s left arm. He will not dismiss me now, he thought.

  He was right.

  Maarten hesitated, then said, “Very well, Mr. Barol. You drive a hard bargain, but that does not count against a man in my book. What sum do you propose?”

  “A hundred, sir.”

  “One hundred guilders!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was silence. Piet held it. Maarten thought of a similar incident in his own twenties when he had stubbornly refused seventeen offers for his ice, even as it lay melting in New York harbor. He was prepared to spend large sums on those he loved and had larger sums at his disposal than all but five or six men in Amsterdam. “Very well, Mr. Barol,” he said, at last. “But I will expect the best of you, young man.”

  “You shall have it.”

  “I will not tolerate lateness or imm
orality. We keep an orderly, respectable, God-fearing establishment.”

  “Which is the position’s chief attraction for me, sir.”

  While this exchange was taking place, Agneta Hemels took a perfect curl of blond human hair from a drawer lined in peach-colored velvet and went to pin it to Jacobina’s head. “Up tonight or down, madam?” She asked the question as though its answer were a matter of grave concern to her.

  Jacobina contemplated herself in the dressing table mirror and changed her mind. “Down, I think. Simple and young. The way Louisa had her hair for the de Jongs’ last month.”

  Agneta’s heart sank: Louisa’s hairstyles, though simple in effect, were far from simple to achieve. “Has madam found a tutor for Master Egbert?” She took the tortoiseshell comb and teased apart the strands for the first braid of the first plait.

  “I suppose so.”

  “We all pray for his success.” Agneta had learned that the easiest way to avoid an overfamiliar curiosity in her superiors’ lives was to have no genuine interest in them whatsoever. This allowed her to remain composed, whatever she saw. “Was madam able to lunch between so many appointments?” Her tone was superbly solicitous.

  Like Piet Barol, Agneta Hemels did not intend to work for the Vermeulen-Sickertses forever; like him, she wished for herself a comfortable life and was determined to get it. Their ambitions varied only in their scope. Agneta wanted to be a housekeeper with a large staff under her, somewhere out in the country, away from the stinks of Amsterdam, a place where others would bring her tea in her own private room and she would never have to rise before 6:00 a.m. unless the roof was burning.